ASRock X79 Extreme9 Motherboard Review

Posted by Dan Stoltz| Mon, Feb 13, 2012 - 12:00 AM

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ASRock X79 Extreme9 Intel X79 Motherboard

In the past we have had several ASRock motherboards come across the Legit Reviews test bench. Every time we have been pleased with the performance. Today we have the opportunity to look at the flagship motherboard from ASRock. The ASRock X79 Extreme9 is the top dog in the ASRock Intel X79 motherboard product stack. Currently, it is retailing for $344.99 plus shipping. It falls in to the middle of the pack of Intel X97 motherboards in terms of pricing. The highest priced Intel X79 motherboard is currently retailing for $449.99 plus shipping while the lowest cost LGA 2011 motherboard is retailing for $209.99 plus shipping. So what exactly will you get for your hard earned dollars with the ASRock X79 Extreme9? Let’s take a look.

The ASRock X79 Extreme9 has many of the same features that we find on just about all of the Intel X79 motherboards that are out there today. Features like SuperSpeed USB 3.0, 3-way NVIDIA SLI, 3-Way AMD CrossFireX, SATA III 6Gbps, and Gigabit Ethernet have become a staple of the technology in motherboards of today. The ASRock X79 Extreme9 also features a number of technologies that are specific to their motherboards. ASRock has a couple of features that are part of the XFast family. Among them are XFast RAM, XFast LAN technology, and XFast USB technology.

The XFast RAM technology is included in the ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility. The ASRock XFast RAM technology will take a portion of your RAM and create a virtual disk. This will boost the performance of many of your applications because your RAM is much faster than hard drives or even SSDs are.

XFast LAN Technology will let you manage what your internet connection is doing. You can configure the priority of the applications that are utilizing the internet. Setting the priority of your online game higher in the XFast LAN utility will reduce the in-game latency. ASRock used World of Warcraft: Cataclysm as an example and achieved a latency that was five times lower than without the XFast LAN technology.

ASRock has also implemented their XFast USB technology on the ASRock X79 Extreme9 motherboard. ASRock claims that XFAST USB will speed up the performance of the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 up to 5x faster than a motherboard without the XFast USB.

Before we move on, let’s take a look at the specifications and features of the ASRock X79 Extreme9 Intel X79 Motherboard.